Kris:
Our Album was written mostly by me during some interesting
times. Part of it was written while my wife was being
treated for breast cancer, parts were written as I was early on
the road back to Jesus, and parts were just resetting after
accepting I seemed to have a calling to write music. Beth
originated the idea for "Time" and came up with the core that I
fleshed out with her. I just hear the songs, so I'm
basically God's secretary - I just write it down.

1. Waves of Love - Like many songs, it was a combination of
events that triggered it. You can see in the video, it
mostly was around an experience at Cannon beach, in Oregon.
It's always been a peaceful place that can bring you closer to
God, and I've always been a bit of a daydreamer. So I was
on the beach, eyes closed, and just thinking "wouldn't it be
cool to go back in time to actually be around when Jesus was
giving his sermon on the mount, and doing miracles.". Much
later, I was remembering that and listening to some music, and
the the whole thing popped into my head, so I dropped the song
I'd been working on, and recorded it.

2. I Cry Out - I was tired. My wife was doing chemo, I had
a new position at work that was very difficult, and I generally
felt lost. I prayed, and in that prayer I just "Cried out"
and asked to be renewed. Not much later, the song came to
me pretty quickly, I think it was minutes. This was
probably the song that started the album because it was so
apparent I was being given music that I couldn't ignore it.

3. City Lights - This is a funny one. I wrote the first
part in the early nineties as I was looking over the cityscape
of Vancouver, Canada. I was working late, and at that
point I was honestly critical of organized religion. I
knew God, but had decided people tended to distort and use the
fear of God for their own end, so I wasn't going to church. That
night, I was watching the lights, and I remember thinking "These
people don't get it, there's something there. We just
can't see it, but it's there.". It nudged me towards my
ultimate direction. So 10,000 years later, I'm serving at
an Alpha course, listening to Nicky Gumbel on a video, and
thinking if people could just do those easy steps. Say
they are sorry, pray, and ask Jesus to come into their lives. I
realized the "feeling" was really similar to that night long
ago, and knitted the two together.

4. You Saved Me - Happy moment. I had
just kind of realized I had found a home church I belonged to,
my pastor had given a great talk on grace, I had done a lot of
critical thinking around Jesus realized I could defend my belief
both from faith but also an intellectual and logical point of
view, and I thought "wow, I was saved. cool." I sat
down with my guitar and wrote it. No small feat for me,
because as I recall at the time my guitar was not so good.
8)

5. Rescue for You - Creekside is a pretty missional church.
We send people out all the time, and support missions in various
places including some fairly dark places. We also
encourage people to share those experience, so one day we had
Dave Waines, who we support, talk about Liberia
www.equipliberia.org.
It was a really hard talk. He is so honest and so fearless
that his message pierces you like a spear. He related what
he was doing and as I was listening (trying really hard not to
cry in front of people) I thought here is a guy who wants to
rescue for Jesus. I went home and wrote the song.
Originally I had Beth come over to sing it (this was after the
point where I gave up being the main vocalist I guess) and she
helped me realize he was almost being a "Soldier of Christ", so
we changed it on the spot. From that point forward Beth
felt free to poke at my clumsy words, and developed more of a
voice. Ironically, the song didn't quite suit her amazing
voice, and Keith had offered any help he could, so I had him
come in, and loved it.

6. Roll the Stone Away - It's an easter song, really about how
quickly God can change things, and how we go from no hope and
despair to joy in the space of a single miracle. It was
obvious to me Keith should sing it, although I can't recall why
- probably his preaching had inspired it. If you've never
heard Keith "read" (he's actually memorized great tracts of the
new testament and acts them out to congregations), you need to.
http://thatyoumayknow.com

7. Him That Gives Me Strength - This
was a really hard song to write. We had gone through
Jenean's chemo, and had really had to learn to accept help and
accept we weren't in control no matter now hard we tried.
It's easy during an experience like that to pull back and hide,
but it felt like God would call us to be even more active, so I
remember Jenean delivering meals to families as she was getting
meals delivered to her because we had more than enough.
Another source of inspiration was Koti Hu
http://codywho.com/ , who I've
been blessed to worship with, had a horrible accident, and
became paralyzed. He had been an awesome guitar player and
musician, and went from a promising life to a very different set
of promises. Yet, he still heard God, and God said you are
not done yet. He talks to people about grace. It still
makes me cry and wonder about the grace of God, and how we don't
understand it until we truly need it. We can do anything
through Him that gives us strength.

8. Time - Beth was doing a video, and felt like she wanted to
have a song on it, and had suggested a song (I forget who now).
I poked her and said why not write your own. She came back
with this really touching idea about Time, nice lyrics, and a
set of chords. I remember thinking "wow, what an awesome idea,
but how will I turn this into a full on song.." and somehow God
moved us that afternoon, and between us we came up with Time.
The idea was really powerful, that really we take time for
granted and really aren't conscious of the effect we have on our
kids by showing them the way we spend our time, and sometimes we
need a tragedy to remind us of that.

Beth:

As a mom to two small
children who suck all my energy, I often find myself
just barreling through each day. But moments make
up a lifetime: I want my time to count and I want my
children to have great memories of daily life at
home. The tragedy
that reminds me to take advantage of time was a dear
friend's baby undergoing heart surgery.

9.God is Good - Ok, it's not deep. At Creekside we have a
saying "God is Good - All the time, All the time - God is Good".
Mac was preaching one day, and had said it, and I thought "huh.
that's simple, but cool". It resonated with me, so I went
home and wrote the chorus on the guitar. The verses had a
complicated history, but basically originally it told a story of
a man who wakes up and can hear the rocks crying out. It
turned out it was overly complicated for a congregational song
like I wanted, so I took the core ideas, and tried to distill
them through the verses. I still worry about it being a
little disjointed, but I also still love the core idea.
God is good.

10. Silent Prayer - Interestingly this was the first song I
wrote for the CD (although I had no idea I would release a CD), and the last one I recorded. I had just
moved to Seattle. I hadn't gone to church for something
other than Christmas, Easter, a wedding or a funeral in a long
time. We knew exactly two adults in Seattle, and were
feeling a little alone. Our neighbors reach out to us, and
eventually asked if we'd like to come over for a "Small Group".
The neighbors were Scott and Leanne Smith, Scott being the
guy who is the better of the guitar players on the CD. ;-)
There are many funny stories about how God clearly reached out
and pulled us back to him during that time, but the song came
about as I was listening to these people pray, and thinking "I
can't do that". As the days went on, I came to
realize I still loved God, and I still wanted to pray, but it
was ok to do it silently. Possibly through song. So
I wrote most of this song. The chorus however, sucked.
So years later, Keith is preaching about the Lord's Prayer, and
it turns out our Worship pastor had a baby, and needed to have
some time off, so they asked me to lead worship with Beth.
I was thinking about what I would sing, and I was smacked upside
the head with finishing this song. I recorded it in my
basement a few days before practice for Beth to hear, and the
piano and most of my vocal track is from that night when I
finished the chorus around Keith's message. It's
rough in some ways (the piano is very simple, my voice isn't the
most awesome voice, I hadn't practiced it) but it still is one
of my favorite messages and songs on the CD.